to looking good. We often find
him hard to make out--everything is left open and loose and unlabelled
in Lim's moral nature. The only really sure way any one can tell when
Lim is being good is, that whenever he is being good he becomes suddenly
and unexpectedly interesting. His goodness is daring, unexpected, and
original. One has the feeling that it may break out anywhere. It is
always doing things that everybody said could not be done before. It is
true that some people are dazed, and no one can ever seem to feel sure
he knows what it is that is going on in Lim when he is being good, or
that it is goodness. He merely keeps watching it. There is a certain
element of news, of freshness, of gentle sensation, in his goodness. It
leads to consequences. And there always seems to be something about
Lim's goodness which attracts the attention of people, and makes people
who see it want it. So when I speak of goodness in this book, and put it
down as the basis of the power of getting men to do as one likes, I do
not deny that I am taking the word away and moving it over from its
usual associations. I do not mean by a good act, a good-looking act, but
an act so constituted that it makes good. For the purpose of this book I
would define goodness as efficiency. Goodness is the quality in a thing
that makes the thing go, and that makes it go so that it will not run
down, and that nothing can stop it.

There is the inefficiency of lying, for instance, and the inefficiency
of force, or bullying.

CHAPTER IV

PROSPECTS OF THE LIAR

My theory about the Liar is that it is of no use to scold him or blame
him. It merely makes him feel superior. He should be looked upon quietly
and without saying anything as a case of arrested development. What has
happened to him is that he merely is not quite bright about himself, and
has failed to see how bright (in the long run) other people are.

When a man lies or does any other wrong thing, his real failure consists
not in the wrongdoing itself, but in his failure to take pains to focus
his mind on the facts in himself, and in the people about him, and see
what it really is that he would wish he had done, say in twenty years.
It seems to be possible, after a clumsy fashion, to find out by a study
of ourselves, and of our own lives and of other men's lives, what we
would wish we had done afterward. Everything we have learned so far we
have learned by guessing wrong on what we have thoug